


The Middle

by DontCallMeLinz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A/U, AU, Female Harry Potter, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26447392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontCallMeLinz/pseuds/DontCallMeLinz
Summary: Aurelia grew up feeling like she didn't quite fit, always looking forward to the day she could join her proper world and find her place. But finding her place isn't as easy as she always dreamed, discovering the hard way that she doesn't really fit there either. Not wizard-raised, but not having much in common with the muggle-raised either, for they come from a social strata very different than she; not just another kid, but not exceptional enough to live up to people's expectations; not Black enough, not Potter enough, and not yet knowing herself well enough to stand on her own as an individual.... She seems to be perpetually caught in the middle, just figuring things out a day at a time.At least she has her elves, some old journals from her family, and a few people who might just accept her as she is.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm nervous posting this. I haven't had it Brit-picked, so apologies in advance. I try really hard to make things sound halfway believable, but I've only ever spent a couple months, collectively, in the UK, and watch a LOT of British programming and youtube, so I'm going with the little I know plus a lot of googling, so some of the info is from more current times because I just couldn't find an answer about how/what it was in the '80s and early '90s. Please be kind about pointing out anything I get super wrong. 
> 
> Updates, like my other story, will be sporadic. I tend to write in spurts then spend weeks obsessively editing until I'm not-too-displeased with a section before I post.

As far as most everyone in Little Whinging is concerned, Aurelia Lily Potter is a perfectly average and forgettable little girl. She lives with her aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, and their son, Dudley, after her parents passed in a tragic accident when she was only 15 months old, and all would say there’s nothing particularly notable about her besides her slightly sad status as an orphan. Her teachers will tell you she’s studious and keeps to herself, and the school and town librarians would agree, adding that she reads quite a lot. The neighbours might note that she seems to enjoy gardening, frequently helping her aunt by pulling weeds, cutting the grass, and tending to the beds of flowers, vegetables, and herbs around their modest home.

The Dursleys themselves, however, would not be likely to say much about her at all. Not because they don’t know her better than her teachers or the librarians, but because the very last thing they want is for her to draw any attention to them. They consider themselves the epitome of all that it means to be normal, thank you very much, and they won’t have their niece ruining the carefully-cultivated image.

For her part, Aurelia is quite aware that she is not in any way normal. 

She’s just as aware that, should she ever slip and allow anyone outside the Dursley home to become aware of her abnormality, her life will shift rapidly from comfortably unpleasant to outright miserable very quickly. Granted, there are times she has contemplated doing it just to see if the house elves might finally take her away to the ancestral home they’ve told her so many stories of.

The house elves, Mopsy, Nilla, and Oslo, are a large part of the reason the Dursley’s put up with Aurelia. They had, apparently, arrived only a few days after Aurelia herself had appeared on the doorstep. According to Nilla, who had told her the story, she had been crying and unhappy for most of the time since her parents had died, and the elves had gotten anxious feeling her discomfort. Nilla had been the one to come check on her then, finding a sleep-deprived Petunia trying to keep her and Dudley separate so Dudley wouldn’t join in her constant crying, and Vernon rapidly approaching the end of his short rope in tolerating the sudden and unwelcome addition to their household.

Nilla had immediately and easily taken charge of caring for Aurelia, calming her with an elven spell especially designed for soothing fussy babies to sleep, then sent Petunia for a nap, assuring her she would look after the children while Petunia rested. It’s a testament to how exhausted Petunia truly was that she hadn’t made an extreme fuss over a house elf appearing in her home in the first place, much less that she didn’t even question the thing taking care of her child.

From that point, the house elves had taken over everything that they would be doing for a family at the keep that has been the Potter’s main home for centuries. The ancient house itself sits mostly empty except for them and some furniture and paintings and such, and requires little effort for them to maintain. The cottage Aurelia and her parents had lived in had taken quite some time for them to repair, particularly without tipping off the ministry that they were doing so, but they’d told her recently that it was done. But, the Dursley house is quite small in comparison to most of the Potter properties, so they still had more than enough time and energy around taking care of it and the family. They clean, do the laundering, the cooking, and much of the gardening.

Aurelia sometimes helps them with the garden and the cooking, but, often, they go out disguised as her to take care of it during daylight hours.

Vernon and Petunia, who are incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of magic, had reportedly managed to partially get over that quite fast once their home was always sparkling and delicious meals were being provided, with them doing little beyond actually going to the grocers for the food. Needing to fill the large amount of free time she found herself with, Petunia took to joining as many play-groups and such as she could with Dudley, and picked up a few hobbies. Once Dudley and Aurelia had entered their reception year, she took a part-time job at their school, working in the office. It would allow her to still be close to her precious Duddikins during the days, occupy her time once spent exclusively on him, and also boost the household income (though that had hardly been lacking anyhow) while leaving her free during most of the summer so she didn’t need to find a minder but for a few days either end as she helped either prepare for or wrap up the school year. Not that she would strictly NEED to find a childminder with the elves around, but people would begin asking questions at some point. Most tend to forget she has a second child in her house that theoretically should be out and about with she and Dudley, so she can get away with just not saying anything about who’s minding Aurelia, but if the neighbours started noticing her leaving BOTH of the children at home and nobody coming or going to keep an eye on them, that would not do at all.

At his wife’s encouragement, Vernon had joined a local rugby club to occupy some of his own time in the evenings and at the weekends, and get him playing again, as he hadn’t since university. It had also allowed him more time away from the house and the elves, which he’d taken a bit longer to adjust to than Petunia. 

All of this had amounted to a comfortable but somewhat sad childhood for Aurelia. The Dursleys make it very plain that they had never agreed to take her in and that the only reason they really put up with her being foisted upon them was because she came with the elves and a stipend that took care of her expenses. She isn’t allowed to do much outside of school or the house - having close friends could lead to people paying attention or asking questions - so her main entertainment is books. Those, at least, she has in plenty. Between school, the local library, and the elves bringing her books and ancestral journals from the family library at the keep, she has seemingly endless reading material. The elves had done what they could to make up for the lack of friends or caring family over the years; spending any time they could with her, helping her learn to use a fountain pen, that and ink provided from storage at the keep, and also taught her as much about how to live like a witch as they could without actually removing her from the care of the Dursleys. Evidently, they can feel some sort of blood-magic between she and Petunia that’s protecting her, which would dissipate if she were no longer technically under her aunt’s care.

Her biggest excitement that she can remember is ticking off days on the calendar in her small bedroom, which she had begun doing a few weeks ago at Dudley’s 11th birthday. She’d been, per usual, left home for the day while Petunia and Vernon took Dudley and a few of his friends from his football club to a zoo, then late lunch and a movie to celebrate.

And today is the one she’s been waiting for.

Her own 11th birthday.

It won’t be celebrated nearly as much as Dudley’s had been, but she doesn’t care. Today, she gets her Hogwarts letter. The elves will make all her favourite foods, and her favourite treat - sticky toffee pudding - for after dinner. She will be presented with a gift from Petunia, most likely some new clothes she’d picked out, which is what Aurelia almost always gets at her birthday and Christmas both. And, at some point, an owl will arrive with her acceptance to Hogwarts.

Whilst it may not seem like much to anyone else, the letter will mean the beginning of the end of Aurelia’s time with the Dursleys. Very soon, she’ll be away from them for nine whole months of the year. And she’s only six years from being allowed to leave and never having to come back. Not having to follow their rules, being allowed to do what she pleases when she pleases, and, most importantly to her, being able to live in one of her family homes. She’s seen photographs and portraits of her family, brought by the elves so she would know what her parents, grandparents, and other ancestors looked like, as well as to teach her about her family history, but except for that, she feels incredibly disconnected from them. Even if they aren’t alive, she just feels like being able to take her rightful place in one of her ancestral homes will make her feel properly like part of the family.

But she has the day itself to wade through to kick off the final stretch, to rejoin her proper world.

Pulling on her clothes for the day - her favourite blue dress - Aurelia listens carefully at her bedroom door for any signs of someone being in the hall before she pulls it open and darts across the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door to that quickly. Shortly, she’s well into her morning routine, washing her face and taking a sip of the mouth-cleaning tonic the elves supply her with and swishing it around her mouth for several seconds before swallowing it. She always goes to bed looking how she prefers to, and she examines that version of herself in the mirror for a moment before sighing and tugging gently on her magic to look more like how aunt Petunia prefers her to.

Her dark red hair - halfway between the vibrant red hair of her mother and the deepest black hair of her father - fades to a only-slightly-reddish blonde colour. Dark green eyes - again, deeper in colour than her mother’s bright ones to account for her father’s brown - become an unremarkable blue.

The ability to change her appearance, some of the family books had told her, is called being a metamorphmagus. She’d inherited the trait through her grandmother Dorea, who had been a Black, a family well known for their women having the trait once upon a time. From reading her grandmother’s journal, Aurelia knows it had largely died out from what Dorea had suspected was too much inbreeding, which she had believed even more strongly when it had cropped up immediately again when one of her nieces, Andromeda, had married and had a child with a muggleborn man. Previous to that girl, Nymphadora, being a full metamorph, only one in a few girls in the family for the past five generations had had any sign of it, then mostly being able to do little but shift the colour of their hair or eyes for a certain range.

Aurelia doesn’t know if she’s a full metamorph, but she can change her eyes and hair however she likes, and she had done some experimentation with changing the size and shape of various other features and body parts with mostly success. Weirdly, the thing that had caused her trouble had been the scar that had been on her forehead for as long as she could remember. It had hurt incredibly when she tried to make it disappear, and she had become suddenly aware of something that felt foreign and extremely wrong with it when she tried to shift it to a different location on her body.

It had been a scary and exhausting few days for her and the elves as they kept a bubble of silence around her bedroom while she sat on her bed crying and occasionally screaming as she did everything she could think of to shift her skin and the bone in the region to force whatever the thing was out. In the end, Oslo had ended up having to trap her flat to the bed and use a very sharp, tiny knife to physically cut away the patch of skin before dripping a skin-knitting potion onto it to make the wound heal quickly. The resultant secondary scar had been utterly benign and easy for Aurelia to make disappear.

Weirdly, that had seemed to fix her eyesight, as she no longer needed glasses to see past an arms-length away after that.

Brushing her hair, then winding it into a plait to lay down between her shoulder blades, she carefully rearranges her fringe to lay neatly so Petunia has absolutely nothing related to Aurelia’s appearance to moan about. With a final look to make sure her dress is sitting right and isn’t wrinkly, Aurelia exits the bathroom and pads softly down the stairs.

As she expected, Petunia is in the sitting room, already dressed for the day and watching some morning talk program despite it being only a few minutes past 7. Vernon will be down soon, at which point the telly will be switched to the news until the morning paper arrives and they move into the dining room for breakfast. In the kitchen, she can hear the muted sounds of Nilla and Mopsy cooking, and the scent of sausages is already wafting out.

Full fry-ups are generally reserved for Sundays and special occasions, the elves insisting it’s not healthy to have so much heavy, fatty food for breakfast every single day. Most days breakfast is eggs and toast with some fried mushrooms or fresh fruit. Sometimes porridge. But her birthday definitely qualifies as a special occasion, so they’ll be doing up a big one for the family.

Moving to the smaller sofa, Aurelia picks up the “muggle” book she’s reading at the moment, which she’d left on the side table the day before, to read until breakfast is ready.

It had been fascinating to find out that Tolkein had, in fact, been a squib that thrived in the muggle world writing and dramatizing about a mish-mash of both sides of his heritage, his mother being a witch and his father a muggle. Evidently, the elven language he created is actually based on a real elven language that’s still used by the reclusive wood-elves that the wizarding world considers extinct. How the man had become familiar enough with them to learn enough of their language to adapt it, she couldn’t even begin to guess and nothing she had found in the modern history books of the Potter library had shed any light on it either.

She’s near the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, and she cracks the book open to her bookmark.

Before long, she hears Vernon upstairs, opening Dudley’s door to make sure the boy is awake for the day before he comes down. She doesn’t look up as he enters, Petunia already standing to switch the channel to the news. 

“Morning, Pet,” he tells his wife as though they hadn’t seen each other awake at least once already this morning, and ignoring Aurelia entirely.

“Good morning, darling,” Petunia replies. They strike up some boring adult conversation about the weather as the forecast happens to be on at the moment the channel is switched, and she continues to ignore them. Of course it’s going to be sunny and hot. It’s the middle of summer. What else would they expect? Snow?

It’s Nilla fetching them for breakfast that makes her tune back in, marking only a handful of pages past where she’d started and leaving her book on the side table again as they all rise to move rooms. Vernon shouts, “Dudley! Breakfast!” in the direction of the stairs as they go, and her cousin comes thundering down the stairs a moment later to join them. He’s not a small boy, taking after his father quite a lot, so he’s broad and what Petunia calls “husky” - meaning basically that if he didn’t play football (and Vernon didn’t play rugby) they’d both likely be considered rather fat, but the sport of choice for either of them seems to keep it all in (mostly) muscle rather than flab.

The breakfast conversation is bland as usual, Vernon moaning about a particular client he’s set to meet with that day and Dudley talking about his planned trip to a friends house several streets over to play video games on the console the friend had recently gotten.

The click of the mail flap sounds, and, a moment later, Mopsy is walking in with the paper from the step and the small stack of post. Most of it is set at Vernon’s elbow, but he holds on to one letter, moving around the table towards Aurelia. This makes Petunia freeze and go blotchy, like her face couldn’t decide if it wanted to go red or pale, so it had done both.

“Miss Aurelia, yous Hoggywarts letter beings here already!” he announces excitedly as he hands it to her. Aurelia wastes no time in setting down her knife and fork to examine it, uncaring that the rest of the table had gone dead silent.

_Aurelia L. Potter  
The Smallest Bedroom  
4 Privet Drive_

It’s not even the full address with a postcode and such, and she sees no stamps, so she’s curious about how the owl had gotten it into the pile of normal mail to be delivered by the postman. Her name and address is in bright emerald green ink and elegant calligraphy. Her own penmanship isn’t nearly so good, though she expects she’ll get plenty of practice writing essays at school in the coming years.

Flipping it over, she finds a blob of purple wax holding the flap closed, with some sort of seal pressed into it. She can’t quite make out the details because it’s pretty small, but it’s obviously the Hogwarts one.

There’s the tiniest puff of magic at her fingertips when she carefully prises the flap open, but she hardly notices as she hurriedly pulls out the folded papers inside.

The letter itself holds little information, telling her only that Dumbledore is still headmaster, Minerva McGonagall is still Deputy Headmistress, and she needs to reply before 7th August. The supply list also tells her little - there’s a self-updating copy of Hogwarts: A History from the family library that she’s read at least three times, and the school list is right in the introduction. It reportedly hasn’t changed since before her three-times-great-grandparents started school.

She’s excited anyway. Looking up, she’s about to ask if she can ride into London with Vernon to go to Diagon Alley when Petunia beats her to it. “Vernon, the girl will need a ride into the city to get her school things,” her aunt almost chokes out before turning her gaze back to Aurelia. “If you aren’t waiting for him when he’s off work this evening to ride home with him, you’ll just have to find your own way back. We won’t be going to any special measures.” her tone is sour, eyes narrow, and face still blotchy.

“Yes aunt Petunia,” Aurelia says immediately, not caring about either the implied time limit or that she’ll almost certainly be making her own way home tonight regardless.

Vernon unhappily grunts out, “Hurry up then, girl. I’m leaving straight after breakfast and I won’t have you making me late for work.” Aurelia sets the pages down and gets back to eating, moving as fast as possible while maintaining the expected exemplary table manners.

In under a couple minutes, Mopsy is taking her near-empty plate away and she’s jumping up and darting up to her room, letter in hand.

Laid out on her bed is what she recognizes as one of her father’s old robes from when he was her age; evidently the boys and girls ones are basically identical until you reach an age that they need to be cut differently to fit properly based on gender, so the elves had dug these out of storage a few months ago when she wondered if she would stick out on her first trip to Diagon because she didn’t have any wizarding clothing yet. Ignoring them for the moment, she first yanks on a pair of socks and her good leather school shoes - which are a little tight and she makes a note to get new ones today. Then, those on, she moves to pull on the loose, grey robes over her dress, leaving them hanging open in front. They’re light and short-sleeved, but she still hopes she won’t get too warm in them, especially lugging shopping around all day. Under them, on the bed, is some kind of shallow, leather-wrapped case with handles on three sides and hinges on the fourth. It looks nearly like Vernon’s briefcase, but a bit bigger. Whatever it is, it’s a family thing, but she knows that only because the Potter crest is worked into the leather on the top.

“That’s beings Missy’s school trunk,” Nilla informs her primly, coming into Aurelia’s bedroom. “It’s beings handed down from Potter to Potter for four generations now. Yous be needings it for carryings yous school things.”

Oh. Right. She hadn’t even considered how she’d be lugging all the shopping about, too excited to finally be going shopping on Diagon.

“GIrl!” Vernon’s shout echoes up the stairs, making Aurelia grab the handle on the long side, noting something pricking her but not having time to pay attention, and take the coinpurse that Nilla holds out for her before rushing out again and down the stairs, following Vernon as he stomps towards his company car.

Sliding into the back seat directly behind him (he never wants to be able to see her on the odd occasion she’s in the car with him or the family to go someplace), she holds her anticipation tightly inside as she settles the trunk at her feet and buckles the safety belt as quietly as possible. From his frequent complaints, she knows that the drive is about an hour to get from the house to his office in South London, but she’s only taken a car ride that long a few times before, and she’s anxious for it to go quickly. She doesn’t even know precisely where it is, though she does know approximately where The Leaky Cauldron is from her mother’s old journals, and her excited entries about getting her letter and her first trip to Diagon Alley.

Having overheard adults talking about London, she surmises that there’s plenty of tube stations, so as long as Vernon’s office is close to one, she should theoretically be able to find a map of the transit system and figure things out.

By the time the journey is well underway, the news now sounding out of the car radio as though Vernon hadn’t already watched it and read it, Aurelia remembers the prick when she picked up her trunk. Laying her left hand flat to examine it, she finds a slight red spot right where her middle finger meets her palm. Brows furrowing slightly, she reaches down to carefully run her fingers over the inside of the handle, but doesn’t find anything. Odd. But maybe something loose had got in there then fallen out when she let go.

Oh well.

In her other hand is her coinpurse, and she does her best to keep it silent as she sets it on her thigh and unties the top to pull out the long, thin strap to hook over her head and shoulder. She’s not as successful as she tries to be, the coins audibly clinking together as she shifts.

“Is that coin?” Vernon grumbles irritably from the driver’s seat. “We don’t give you money, where’d you get it?”

“The elves brought me my mother’s purse,” she answers honestly. “It had some- uh, some of OUR type of coin left in it still, in case I needed it before I can get to the bank.” He only huffs, at least satisfied that she hadn’t been stealing from them or someone else. Which is what she wants him to believe. Though, technically it hadn’t been HER doing the stealing. The elves had long ago taken to appropriating all of the pocket change and some of the bills that he and Petunia forgot to empty from their dirty laundry before wash day, and stashing it away in one of the drawers of the tiny desk in Aurelia’s bedroom for her. Dudley gets pocket money each week, but she doesn’t, and they hadn’t considered that very fair at all. 

They had eventually come across both her parent’s purses in cleaning out the cottage, and subsequently did a search of the keep as well, collecting most of the coin they could find (some went in to replenish the small vault that’s kept there for the elves to use for daily purchases) and piling it into her mother’s purse. It has multiple compartments to account for both muggle and magical currency, and to separate denominations. There’s even an empty compartment to store small items, like the vault keys and Gringotts vouchers that her mother had kept there.

She hasn’t counted it all up, nor had the elves to her knowledge, but there’s quite a bit in there. She’d stuck her hand in to feel around on the wizarding side only for her hand to be buried up to the lowest knuckles on her fingers in coins. She’d pulled a couple out to find she’d ended up in the galleon section, the gold coins about the same size as the muggle penny, but a bit thinner.

The drive drags on with Aurelia sitting silently, staring out the window, while Vernon periodically mumbles to himself about something on the radio or complaining about the other drivers on the motorway around them. Eventually, they turn off the motorway and onto narrower streets, then into a carpark, Vernon pausing to hold up what she thinks is his work identification card to show a security guard, who raises the entrance gate for them to go through. In moments, he has pulled into a parking stall and yanked his parking brake, making Aurelia scramble to unbuckle and reach down for her trunk. She carefully exits the vehicle and moves out of his way so he can climb out.

Following him through a door at the corner and down two flights of steps, Vernon is surprisingly charitable about pointing at a door that appears to lead to the pavement outside and saying, “To the left, skip the next road, and left at the one after, you’ll find the tube station. If you aren’t waiting outside this door when I leave at half five, I won’t be waiting.” Before she can even fully process his words, he’s marching through a different door that leads into the building next to the carpark and disappearing down a corridor, bright with fluorescent lighting.

Caught now between cautious and excited, she pulls open the heavy door and steps out onto the pavement with a deep breath. 

The street beyond isn’t as bustling and busy as she expected. It’s decently crowded, certainly, with lots of people in business clothes hustling into the various buildings lining the street, but it’s nothing like the crushing crowds she’s heard adults bemoaning at the prospect of a trip into the city. She garners some curious stares as she waits for the light to turn at the zebra crossing, but ignores them, trying to act like she knows exactly where she is, what she’s doing, and where she needs to go.

In a few short minutes, she has found the tube station. It would be difficult to miss the domed concrete building with “UNDERGROUND” written on it (and signs around it) no less than a dozen times. Crossing a final road, she draws closer to it and finds more signs pasted to the outside of the curved wall. Maps. Perfect.

It takes her longer than she would care to admit to figure out the maps, but she does eventually realize that the tube line splits (which is what makes it look exceptionally confusing as she tries to trace back what line or lines she’ll need) and which side of the split she needs to go on. The ticket machines near the entrance to the station, at least, are fairly self-explanatory, leading her through the process by putting options on a display to select with buttons at the side. It still takes her a couple tries to get an all-day pass for zones 1 and 2, and she still couldn’t figure out how to get one in the child’s fare rate, but she doesn’t even care by that point. She just wants to get to Charing Cross and find the Leaky Cauldron and go through to Diagon Alley already.

Feeding the machine the value it’s requesting in muggle currency, she waits for it to spit out a paper ticket, idly thinking that she wishes the trunk had a strap or something, so she could carry it on a shoulder instead of like a briefcase. At the same moment the paper emerges from the machine, she feels the handle of the trunk change, and it’s a frantic few seconds as she tries to collect the ticket and figure out what was happening with the trunk simultaneously. Getting on track, she pauses to just take the paper before fully looking down to find that the handle she’d been carrying the trunk on.... had lengthened into a strap so she could carry it on her shoulder. Huh. Nifty.

Bending slightly, she hooks it over her head and straightens, finding the trunk rests comfortably at her hip, and seems to have gotten smaller while it was making it’s alterations.

Looking around, she notes that she’s getting attention again and carefully merges into the stream of people heading downward.


	2. Chapter 2

Huffing in mixed annoyance and relief, Aurelia pushes the door to the Leaky Cauldron open. Finally.

She’d ended up on the wrong branch of the tube line and had to go to where they next intersected to backtrack. Additionally, despite the pub being off Charing Cross Road, it’s apparently quite a bit closer to Leicester Square station than Charing Cross station and it had been more of a walk than she expected to essentially backtrack a second time to find the bloody place. She’d also discovered what all the adults mean by the horrid crowds in the city. Here, evidently much closer to some major tourist attractions, it had been much worse than near her uncle’s office down near the Clapham station.

Six years, is what she keeps telling herself. Six more years, then she can learn to apparate. For now, a wand is on her very long list of things to get today, and from that point she can at least take the Knight Bus. Heaven knows Vernon and Petunia will never consent to hooking their fireplace up to the floo network.

The dingy pub is surprisingly busy. She would’ve thought that most people would be at work by now. Though, if they’re going to work in shops, then there would need to be shoppers, wouldn’t there?

She’s pretty sure nobody had noted her coming in, as there’s a steady stream of people moving through the pub, so she just carefully merges into the queue of people on their way out the back. She doesn’t get to see what her mother had described as the archway peeling itself open from the brick wall, as it’s already standing open for the large number of people to get through, but the sight of the alley is still plenty wondrous even without the grand reveal.

The sun beams down into the twisting alley, reflecting off of windows higher in the buildings that seem to be angled specifically to facilitate it. Magic is heavy in the air, and Aurelia’s eyes and ears can’t focus on anything for long enough to really take any of it in. She’s distracted from examining a giant barrel piled high with newt eyes (5k per scoop!) by a ruckus of what sounds like a lot of startled, large birds screeching from a nearby pet store, but before she can do more than glance at the pet store, her eyes is caught by a window display in the next shop up, filled with shiny gizmos that she can’t even describe.

She’s still caught in the flow of the crowd, ambling slowly down the alley, but she doesn’t try to hurry. There’s so much to look at! A stationery shop displaying options for customizing parchment, a sale display on collapsible cauldrons, another pet shop, two more apothecaries, four different clothes stores, a trunk and bag shop, and at least three book stores don’t even make up half of the shopfronts she passes, but it’s what she processes. Eventually, the crowd has thinned and she’s moving through it instead of with it as more people are heading more different directions. Near the end of the lane, before it splits off into three other, much quieter streets, stands the gleaming white marble fronting of Gringotts.

Pulling up everything she can remember her mother and grandmother mentioned in their journals about the goblins, Aurelia squares her posture and marches confidently into the bank. Dorea had said goblins don’t like people who automatically defer to them just because they’re the guardians of gold in the wizarding world. The gold itself still belongs to the individual, and they don’t respect anyone who is meek about having access to what is rightfully theirs.

Well, she’s waited years to find her place in the world, she’s not about to be shy about taking it now it’s just in front of her.

Trying to stay calm and confident, she nods a greeting to the goblins by the doors, not letting herself react to seeing them for the first time. There will be time for her to process the multitude of new sights and sounds and experiences later. She has things to take care of that will not be helped by getting too caught up in her sense of wonder.

Besides, she’s supposed to be some kind of saviour, right? The elves bring her the wizarding paper sometimes, when there’s stories they think she should read or would be interested in. There’s been more than a few these past few months talking about her, anticipating her entering Hogwarts and the public eye. They all talk about her like she’s the next coming of Merlin or something. While she doesn’t necessarily want to perpetuate that (she’s just a kid) she also doesn’t want people to think they can take advantage of her. So, she has a certain reputation to uphold.

Glancing at the two queues of people patiently or not-so-patiently waiting for a teller to call the next person forward, she walks between them instead of joining one. There’s a few perturbed whispers, but it isn’t her fault they don’t know to just walk up to a teller and state your business with the bank. The goblins are as likely to make them wait hours as to actually help the queues in an orderly fashion, according to Dorea.

Picking a teller that’s weighing large jewels on some scales, she stops in front of him and says, “I will speak with Senior Account Manager Starstrike immediately.” in as even a tone as she can manage. 

The goblin on the other side of the high desk sneers down at her. “And why would Senior Account Manager Starstrike speak with you.”

“If Senior Account Manager Starstrike would not speak with his client then I will have a new account manager,” she responds, repeating an interaction Lily had once witnessed and written about in awe and confusion nearly word-for-word.

Still sneering, the goblin demands, “Vault number?”

“5, 13, 27, 53, 76, 114, 159, 233, 302, 377, 454, 499, 528, and 637,” she lists them off quickly, making the goblin’s expression change abruptly.

It had taken her some time to memorize, but she’s already glad for it. He barks something out in the goblin language that makes one of the goblins stationed around the perimeter of the room move toward one of the sets of doors also around the perimeter, and she walks quickly to catch him up, hoping it doesn’t look too much like she’s hurrying. The runner goblin is silent as he leads her through a maze of corridors before stopping suddenly in front of a particular one and knocking twice before opening it and stepping inside. There’s a short exchange in the goblin language before he steps back out again, leaving the door open for her to enter.

Inside, she finds chaos. Randomly placed filing cabinets, stacks of paper taller than her, topmost sheets held from flying away by weapons, goblets, and any number of other things, pedestals with ledger books standing open and quills hovering in front of them, some writing on their own. In the middle of it all is another goblin, presumably Starstrike, the Potter account manager since the time of her great-grandfather Fleamont creating Sleekeasy’s, sitting behind a massive desk in just as much disarray as the rest of his office.

“You claim to be the Potter Heir.” he demands gruffly as she approaches and clears off one of the chairs across from him.

Plopping down in the chair after setting aside the stack of paper, she replies, “No. I AM the Potter Heir. Nor did I make any claims to such. I stated my vault numbers plainly, if you choose not to believe they are mine, then make the test and accept your forfeit.” 

She’s referring to the blood test to ensure her lineage. If it comes back saying she’s not a Potter, or not the Potter she’s claiming to be, she’ll be liable for an exorbitant fee for the test and wasting the goblins’ time. But, when it does come back that she’s Aurelia Potter, the bank will be liable for a similar fee for delaying her having access to her vaults and accounts as well as forcing her to give blood unnecessarily. Personally, she doesn’t quite get why the bank would be held liable, as she prefers they maintain security such as this rather than allowing just anyone free access, but as far as she can tell the reasoning boils down to goblins having different values and ways of thinking than humans, and she isn’t about to complain about a couple thousand free galleons.

With a sneering click of his fingers, several objects fly to his desk from around the room. A long, wide roll of yellowing parchment, some sort of little silver funnel-ish thing, a dish of what appears to be salt (but only partially is), and a small dagger.

Unceremoniously, he unrolls the first foot or so of the parchment, revealing the Potter coat of arms, above it a red-brown-stained patch where generations of Potters before her have dropped their blood to confirm their identity or add spouses to the accounts. Just as unceremoniously, Aurelia reaches forward to take the dagger, unable to stop a slight wince as she jabs the end into the pad of her ring finger on her right hand, squeezing it several times to work a big drop of blood to the surface of her skin. That done, she sets the dagger in the dish of salt-and-other stuff, the tip with her blood on it jabbing into the white crystals, and reaches her hand to drip the blood into the wide top bit of the funnelly thing, which had been placed on the discoloured bit of parchment. 

While the funnel does it’s thing holding her blood in place for the magic parchment to absorb and trace her lineage, she sticks her injured finger in the salt stuff, gritting her teeth even harder but not daring to utter a sound as the goblin watches her calculatingly. It stings like hell, but the substance mixed with the salt is basically a disinfectant, and she knows not to expect any sort of medical supplies, so she has to take what she can. 

Surprisingly quickly, the parchment picks itself up and races towards the high ceiling, unfurling itself rapidly. The bottom couple feet trail onto the floor (and stacks of paper) next to the chair Aurelia is in. At the end, her name glows in a sinister red colour, along with all of those of her direct ancestors, lighting a path up her family tree. Starstrike examines it closely before letting out a huff and snapping his fingers again to re-roll the parchment and send everything back to where it had been fetched from.

“I will see your keys,” is his next demand, and she reaches into her purse to grab the ring of bank keys. They had been in the purse when the elves gave it to her, likely due to Lily having been to the bank to set up the provisions for their wills only a few days before- “You are Aurelia Potter.” he states, handing the keys back after a short examination.

“I told you that,” she states back before standing. “I will visit my vaults. Numbers 53, 302, and 454.” The highest-security heirlooms vault, one of the medium-security heirlooms vaults, and one of the less-restricted gold vaults. She has Things she wants to look through.

_p_a_g_e_b_r_e_a_k_

According to the clock in the lobby, Aurelia emerges from the bank more than two hours after she had entered. And that was with her trying to move somewhat quickly. She’ll need to dedicate whole days at a time to going through her many vaults in their entirety.

Her first mission had been to go through the (frankly, massive) collection of family wands in vault 53. One of the oldest wands in the bunch had let off a massive shower of white sparks when she held it, giving her a rushing warm feeling of magic. From the little plaque, she knows it belonged to one of the many Peverell’s waaaay back in the family tree, but the name didn’t stand out to her. Wand thus acquired, she had fetched the Heir’s ring and donned it before glancing through some of the other jewelry and picking out some things she likes that aren’t too flashy. She needs to represent her family, not make people resent her by flaunting ostentatious jewelry that’s inappropriate for a schoolgirl of any class. Maybe when she’s older, she’ll have occasions to wear the rest, but she’s got a solid decade before that might be the case, except the odd yule ball if she gets invited to one.

The medium-security vault had held a large variety of enchanted items. Notably, her father’s school bookbag. Bigger on the inside, a multitude of hidden pockets, feather-weight, and several other in-built spells, it’s one of the few things her father had journaled about. He didn’t seem to write in his journal consistently, sometimes going nearly whole years without making an entry, but the things he did document were things like the process of enchanting the bag, or he and his friends creating and enchanting a map of Hogwarts or becoming animagi. If it weren’t for the war, he almost certainly would’ve been the next famous inventor in the Potter line.

Thankfully, her mother and grandmother had been much more diligent about it, documenting all sorts, including everything Aurelia had painstakingly memorized to deal with the goblins for the first time. She isn’t sure how well she did, but now she’s been confirmed as the Heir and it will be significantly easier in future.

Also from the vault of enchanted items, she’d taken a heirloom jewelry box, which she’ll be keying to her blood before going to school, a wand holster enchanted to be invisible and undetectable when it’s being worn, and a purse similar to the one she’s already using of her mother’s but bigger and more heavily enchanted for security. Given her status as the “hero” of the wizarding world, Aurelia has no doubt that she’ll be a target for theft at school, she will not be making it even a tiny bit easy for the would-be thieves.

There, she had packed most of her things into the trunk hanging at her hip, which she had finally opened to see it also bigger on the inside and with many, many shrunken compartments that pull out from all four sides as well as up from the bottom, and expand for storage. There had been some random items that the elves had evidently packed her from her parents and grandparent’s things; a pretty antique hairbrush and small mirror, a few more fountain pens and empty inkwells and other accessories, a slim wooden box to keep loose paper in in her backpack without it crumpling, a few sheets still in from whomever had last used it, some equipment that she can only assume is for potions from the cauldron on the compartment lid. It was really quite sweet of them.

In the third and final vault of the day - the one allocated for use for general household and Family spending - Aurelia had filled her mother’s purse to its capacity in wizarding coin, unsure how much will be required to get all of her school things as well as quite a bit more. She requires a whole wardrobe, after all, and many other things that she’ll need AT, but not necessarily FOR school. Shampoo. An alarm clock. Et cetera. She’d also taken that time to evaluate how much she has in muggle money, finding... a lot more than she expected. Either her mother had kept an emergency stash, or the elves had found and taken quite a bit more cash from the Dursleys over the years that she realized. Possibly both.

Pausing at the bottom of the steps of the bank, she looks down the alley thoughtfully to plan out her shopping priorities before going into one of the nearby stores - Ursa’s Used Books. No sense wasting money on new books that she’s likely only going to need for a few years. Almost certainly not longer than she’s in Hogwarts.

The interior of the shop is cozy and welcoming. There’s a number of people in here, all obviously having the same idea as Aurelia, going through the shelves of texts that take up about two-thirds of the space, clearly marked by the year they correspond with. The other third contains the register desk and other smaller sections organized by topic. Picking up one of the sturdy wicker baskets near the door, she moves to the section for 1st years.

The shelves are further delineated, she finds, by subject and whether the texts are required or supplemental. 

In only a few minutes, she’s hefting the basket - obviously charmed to be lighter than the contents - onto the high desk housing the register. She’d only taken copies of nearly all the first year texts and a few supplemental books. There aren’t any copies of 1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi available. People must not resell them once they leave Hogwarts as often. She’ll need to buy that new. Equally, there seemed little point in buying off-course books right this moment when she doesn’t know what she already has in the family library, or would be interested in. 

The girl behind the register smiles easily as she immediately begins tapping buttons on the old metal contraption. The girl knows the prices off by rote, so she either has worked here a lot - perhaps her family owns the store? - or she has at least done the same books so many times that she’s memorized it. Faster than Aurelia might have expected, the girl says, “That’ll be 9 galleons, 15 sickles, and 22 knuts,” in a friendly tone.

Pulling a small handful of galleons from her purse, Aurelia counts out ten and hands them over, the girl counting out change quickly, which gets dropped with the excess galleons back into the bag. Trying to hurry before she’s blocking up anyone else, Aurelia sets down and opens her trunk, pulling out one of the four bookshelf compartments from the left side and stacking her new purchases there in no particular order. She can sort it out later.

“Clever,” the girl comments, glancing at the trunk as she tidies something on the table. “Most people don’t think to bring their trunks school shopping; end up having to buy a bag or three, or carrying around a bunch of bundles.”

“Taking the Knight Bus home, don’t think bundles would do very well,” Aurelia comments back, securing the compartment, then the lid before standing and slinging it over her shoulder again. A small family is approaching, so she returns a final smile from the shopgirl before heading for the door.

Her mother’s description of her first ride on the Knight Bus had amused Aurelia greatly, but also prepared her for the reportedly wild ride she’ll experience soon.

Back on the cobbled street, she stands to one side and reminds herself she can finally have a moment to breathe and enjoy it. The Gringotts trip had been odd, trying to play the part of an Heir based off written accounts of other people’s experiences. But out here, nobody knows who she is. So long as she’s polite, there’s nothing wrong with her being excited to be preparing to go to school. As such, a grin creeps onto her face as she winds her way directly across the lane and into the nearest apothecary, still just taking in being in a place so blatantly... magical.

She’s finally home.

_p_a_g_e_b_r_e_a_k_

“Really, Petunia,” the slightly scandalized sound of Mrs. Jones from number 9 up the street drifts up from the back patio to Aurelia’s open window. “You intend to keep working at the school even with neither of the children there any longer?” The neighborhood wives had always written off Petunia working as her being unwilling to leave her children - Dudley in particular - for the whole day.

Petunia lets out a measured laugh, replying, “Heaven help me, but I found that I quite enjoy having a job. I believe I might actually be bored to tears if I haven’t something to occupy my days, both the children heading away to board and Vernon in London five days per week. One can only hoover the curtains so many times before going a bit mad.”

The dig is the subtle variety that are the stock and trade of the suburban housewives that make up Petunia’s supposed friends group. Implying that the others are a bit simple for happily pottering around the house all day every day. The only way Petunia would have deemed that one any better was if Aurelia hadn’t been mentioned in the conversation. Unfortunately for her aunt, the ladies had seen her come downstairs for a glass of water a few minutes ago, so her presence was still fresh enough in their minds to lump her in as one of Petunia’s children.

And more, evidently. “You told us about the school Dudley will be going to, but what about your niece? I don’t believe you’ve mentioned where she’ll be,” one of the other ladies inquires.

Petunia’s voice is carefully cheerful as she responds, “Oh, she’s been accepted to a small private school in the highlands. St. Rowena’s. It’s the same one my sister attended.” The conversation tawdles onward, but Aurelia tunes it out, instead focusing on going through her trunk (for the fourth time) to make sure she has everything in there that she won’t need in the next 16 or so hours before she leaves for Hogwarts. 

She’s just finished going through her clothing compartments (no matter how pointless that had been, as she’d only not-packed a handful of items, which she’s either wearing already or can see sitting on top of her chest of drawers). Forcibly making herself skip over the various equipment and potions supply sections (she hadn’t done more than open them to look at something to get a visual reference what she was reading about since purchasing all of it a month previously), she instead opens one her sundry drawers, reassuring herself once again that all of her bathing necessities are in there. The next one she opens has her other hygiene things in, and here she pauses to let herself trail fingertips over a few pretty bottles that she hadn’t expected to have.

Petunia had gone off-script this year, not getting her clothes for her birthday. Instead, the gift this year had been shockingly thoughtful and sentimental. Actually, technically multiple gifts. The biggest had been a sturdy, leatherbound journal with a pretty knotwork pattern tooled around the edges of the cover. The rest had been bottles of fancy-seeming perfume. The one her grandmother Heather, Petunia and Lily’s mum, had worn every day, the one Lily had worn as a teenager, and a half-dozen miniature sample-size bottles Petunia had gotten to see if any of them might be something she’d like a proper bottle of to wear regularly. She’d sniffed and informed Aurelia that she’s still too young to begin wearing makeup, but that it’s the family tradition for a girl to take the first step in that direction with perfumes when they begin secondary. 

Having cycled through wearing each of them at least a few times since then, Aurelia thinks her favourite so far is the one her mother wore, but she doesn’t know if that’s truly due to preference or just because of the novelty of having a connection to her mother.

Making herself close the drawer instead of lingering for no real reason, the last thing she allows herself to check is the stationery compartment. It has several sub-compartments to organize the supplies there, and she’d gone a bit wild at the stationery shops on Diagon filling the spaces up. It’s something she knows she should probably be at least a little embarrassed about, but she’d always quite loved shopping for school supplies; examining each available option of pen and pencil, weighing how much she likes each brand and colour of notebook. Not that she’d ever been allowed to choose her preferences up to now. Petunia always just bought she and Dudley the basic standards. Aurelia had loved seeing the options anyhow.

But now she’s allowed to buy whatever she pleases, because it’s HER money and Petunia has absolutely no say at all. And the wizarding world has such incredible variety! She hadn’t been able to help herself.

A stack of slim notebooks and her two journals - the one from Petunia and another, never-ending one she’d bought before receiving the gifted one - take up one section. The notebooks are thin, appearing to only have 40 or 50 pages, but as you flip through, the pages keep going much further. The clerk at the store she’d gotten them had assured her they’ve 300 pages each, 600 if you use both sides. She’d gotten one for each of her classes this year plus a few extras in case she has other things she wants to use them for, all in different colours for easy identification. 

A smaller section above that holds only a rolled scroll of parchment, which she’d been talked into buying in case she needed to send any official correspondence by one of the few clerks to spot her Heir ring. The matching space next to it holds the seal she’d asked Oslo to find at the keep (he’d been overly apologetic about forgetting it before) along with a couple sticks of sealing wax in the Family green. Below that and next to the notebooks is a frankly slightly staggering amount of loose-leaf paper, held in bundles with twine, along with the case the elves had given her for carrying around. The options here had been endless. Every shade of white, off-white, cream, and eggshell you can imagine; varieties with faint guidelines to help you write in a straight line and with even spacing, which disappear as you write; options with enchantments to check spelling and grammar (“They’re banned for exams, of course, but you’re allowed for regular assignments.”). Unable to decide, she’d ended up with ten different packs of 200 sheets of paper each.

The final sector is the biggest, with all the miscellaneous and writing supplies. A box of little pins that she thinks are essentially magical staples, along with a tiny mallet and metal stopping-block to knock them through multiple sheets of paper. A ruler for measuring essay length. Blotting blocks. Some sort of cork rubber that will remove erasable inks from paper. Bottles of ink in every colour of the rainbow, and one bottle that’s all the colours of the rainbow, depending which angle you hold it at under the light. Different consistencies and opacities - they even have a sort of highlighter in thin, sheerly-tinted inks that you can apply over other ink with a brush to mark textbooks or notes. A shallow box filled with extra pen nibs. Which brings her to THE PENS.

Again unable to decide on one or even a few, she has.... MANY writing implements. In addition to the four fountain pens the elves had already supplied her with, she’s another three that are so pretty she couldn’t help but buy them. Then there’s the fountain pen’s predecessor, the dip pen, which will be much more useful for the variety of novelty inks that she’ll only be using once in a while and doesn’t need to have loaded into a pen for regular use, and had used that as an excuse to buy a fistful of the prettily carved and painted wooden shafts. And from there, their predecessor, the feather quill.

Those, she doesn’t even have an excuse for. They’re pretty and she’d wanted them. She may never even use them, but they look so nice arranged in their pen cup that she still considers it money well spent. Not that most of them had cost a lot; most feather quills are less expensive than even the dip pens, because they won’t last nearly as long. Only the ones from rare breeds of bird cost very much.

The pen cups had been the next thing she’d ooh’d and ahh’d over.

Once nibs are on, it’s not recommended to store pens upright, because you risk damaging the nib. And, naturally, the wizarding world had come up with a slightly fantastical solution. Pen cups that unfurl themselves to turn into an upright stand. Once unfurled, rows of slightly curved hooks form places to store your pens horizontally while maintaining easy access to just grab one. 

Naturally, Aurelia had bought three in different colours. She expects she’ll leave the one holding the feathers in cup form.

And she really hopes she ends up in one of the houses that she’ll have her own desk in her dorm. There’d been employees that had been in every house between the two larger stationery stores she’d plundered, and they had happily answered many of her questions about what she would need and what would be available at the school. Evidently, the exact dorm arrangements vary house-to-house, but all except the Gryffindors at least have their own small desk for when you want or need to study by yourself and storing supplies. For that alone, Aurelia doesn’t want to be a Gryffindor, despite that being the house both her parents had been in. She’s not quite THAT desperate to have every connection she can. She needs her study space.

Abruptly, Aurelia realizes the voices from the back garden have stopped, and she doesn’t hear them downstairs either. Looking over at her newly-purchased alarm clock that stands on her desk (which she then proceeds to pack, good thing she quadruple checked after all) she sees that she’d been idly fiddling with her supplies for over an hour and thinking about what’s to come.

Less than a day, she reminds herself again before settling in her desk chair to read the first chapter of her potions text again, notebook selected for that subject and a supplementary text next to her being basically all she’d left out intentionally.


	3. Chapter 3

Following the very large man, Hagrid, down the narrow path from the village to the lake, Aurelia does her best not to fidget nervously with her robes. In front of her is the quiet girl she’d ridden in a compartment with on the train, Daphne Greengrass, and behind is another ginger girl who had met her eyes and offered a friendly smile upon them ending up next to one another in the group.

It’s the first time she’s been out amongst wizards looking like herself. Or, how she thinks she looks - dark red hair laying flat over her shoulders, fringe coming just to the top of her brows, green eyes closer to her mother’s shade than usual. The metamorph thing can really do your head in trying to figure out what appearance is “really” you.

The train ride had been uneventful, as she had arrived quite early, having again ridden to London with Vernon before taking the tube (much easier to navigate the second time ‘round), thus allowing her her choice of compartments. Daphne had pulled Aurelia’s attention from her potions text (still not packed away, so as to have something to do for the 7-and-a-half-hour train journey) asking if Aurelia wouldn’t mind her sitting there about 20 minutes before the train departed. The blonde girl had introduced herself and managed to only react to finding out Aurelia’s name with a slight widening of the eyes as she settled on the other bench. The few other people Aurelia had introduced herself to previously had pretty much all gone a bit weird, so she’d been grateful for the relative non-reaction.

The ride had been fairly quiet, with them chatting a bit here and there about classes they’re anticipating or not particularly looking forward to, discussion of the houses, and various other impersonal, small chat things one discusses with a new acquaintance. It had been quite nice.

Chatter from further up in the queue increases excitedly, and Aurelia sees why quickly as they round a bend in the path and see Hogwarts for the first time, lights glittering through the many windows against the darkening sky as the sun sets. It makes for a beautiful first impression, but Aurelia finds herself idly hoping dinner isn’t so late every night. If the sun is setting, that means it’s nearly 8, and they aren’t even in the castle yet.

As they climb into the boats, she joins Daphne again, the girl behind her and the one behind HER following them into the vessel. The other ginger introduces herself as Susan Bones, and the other girl as her best friend, Hannah Abbot. Hannah’s hair is darker, seeming to be some shade of brown that Aurelia can’t quite make out in the fading light, and she’s distracted from further examination of them as they gasp and squeak when she introduces herself. The group is quiet for the trip across the lake, the two girls trying to be sneaky about staring at her between pointing at different wings and towers of the castle and muttering to each other.

She’s next to Daphne as the first years climb the stairs from the dock. “That must get tiring,” the other girl mutters annoyedly in reference to the reaction from Susan and Hannah.

“That’s actually relatively tame,” Aurelia mutters back. “When I went to Diagon for school supplies, I could barely make it out of one of the clothing shops because people heard me say my name to stitch into the tags and crowded around, shouting over each other trying to introduce themselves and ask personal questions.”

Daphne seems even more annoyed at that, only grumbling, “People...” and making a tsk-ing noise.

They draw to a halt as Hagrid stops them at a door and raises a hand to bang out a couple knocks. It’s open less than a second later, as though the person on the other side had been waiting for them, which made Aurelia wonder why they hadn’t just had it open anticipating them. “The firs’ years, Professor,” Hagrid hands them off cheerfully, and they are now following a witch of indeterminate age through a slightly narrow, shadowed corridor before emerging into a wide hall. 

To one side an absolutely giant set of wood doors. Besides the corridor they’re spilling out from, there’s at least five others and two sets of stairs leading away from the open space. On the wall opposite the massive doors are three more sets of them, smaller but still very grand; the ones in the middle being the largest, with the flanking ones being much more reasonable, in Aurelia’s opinion. That will be the great hall, then. Which means they’re in the entrance hall.

Once all the new students are gathered in a group in front of the stern-looking professor, she introduces herself. “For those who are not already aware, I am Minerva McGonagall, Head Professor of Transfiguration, Deputy Headmistress, and Head of Gryffindor House.” Ah, so THIS is the woman her father had gleefully and affectionately antagonized through school, having known her as ‘Aunt Minnie’ prior to it. “Shortly, you will be sorted into your House before the rest of the school. The four Houses are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. Each has its own honoured and noble history. Your House will, for the duration of your time at Hogwarts, be your home, and your family. Excellence in class and exemplary behaviour outside of class will earn your House points toward winning the House Cup at the end of the school year, while any rule-breaking will lose them.”

She’s cut off by a chattering group of.... Aurelia’s eyes widen, having not expected to see so many ghosts so immediately. She’d known that Hogwarts has quite a few, of course, but it appears that all of them have come en masse for the welcome feast. They float slowly through the entrance hall like a group of live people meandering and chatting, until Professor McGonagall tells them to get in to their places in the Great Hall if they wish to watch the sorting. A few tip their hats as they obey, floating through the doors and wall into the hall, while McGonagall instructs the first years to form a queue and follow her.

Before Aurelia knows it, they’re being led into and through the great hall, which is as beautiful as the rest of the castle so far. From a few places in front of her, she hears another girl quietly exclaim about the ceiling being enchanted, making Aurelia shift her gaze from the elaborate tapestries lining the walls up toward the ceiling, admiring the mix of orange and purple of the sunset.

Soon, the queue of first years has fanned out across the open space between the house tables and the head table, where McGonagall stands next to a three-legged stool with a very old-looking hat on it. The whole hall goes dead silent, making Aurelia wonder what the blazes is happening before the hat springs to life. The seam between the brim and the top opens and... it begins singing. Not knowing what to make of that, Aurelia watches without actually taking in a word of what it’s saying. She should know to expect the oddest things from the wizarding world by now, having seen her own family’s collection of uniquely-enchanted items then gone straight to shopping in Diagon, but how does one anticipate a singing hat?

Ringing applause pulls her back to the moment as the song seemingly concludes, and she belatedly joins in with a few soft claps as the noise begins to die out nearly as abruptly as it began.

“When I call your name, please step forward to be sorted,” McGonagall instructs the first years, pulling a scroll out from a pocket and unrolling it. “Abbott, Hannah!” is the first name called, and the brown-haired girl that had been in her boat hurries forward, the professor lifting the hat for Hannah to sit on the stool before setting the cloth down on her head.

In a moment, the hat shouts, “Hufflepuff!” and McGonagall quickly picks the hat up again as the girl’s uniform tie and robe lining shift to a bright goldenrod yellow and she moves toward the table on the middle-right, who are clapping happily at getting the first student of the year. They get the second as well before a few are scattered between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, then Gryffindor welcoming Brown, Lavender as their first new student of the year.

Daphne goes to Slytherin House, and Aurelia hopes even harder she won’t be a Gryffindor. If it’s still anything like when her parents were at school, it would be nearly impossible for them to remain friendly, and she thinks she likes the other girl. She’s hoping they can become proper friends.

After a pair of twin girls get separated into Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and Perks, Sally-Ann, goes to Hufflepuff, it’s finally Aurelia’s turn.

Ignoring the loud murmur that breaks out, she tries not to pay attention to people standing and craning to try and get a look at her as though she won’t be in school with them for at least a year. McGonagall, thankfully, doesn’t seem phased as she just sets the hat down on Aurelia’s head as she had every other student. Noise cuts off along with light, and there’s a beat of silence before she has to contain a twitch. “Hmmm.... interesting, interesting.... But where to put you....” a creaky old man voice sounds inside of her head. That’s very weird.

A chuckle, then, “Yes, many find this process disconcerting.” he - it? - seems to reply directly to her thought. “Plenty of ambition in here, and bravery as well, though it’s a rather quieter sort than most Gryffindors. Quite a healthy thirst for knowledge and a work ethic to pursue it. You are a tricky one.”

He sounds pleased, but she would like this experience to be over as quickly as possible so she tries to think loudly, “Can you put me where I’ll be just another person then, please?”

“Is that really what you want? To be just another face in the crowd?” it asks incredulously, probably rethinking his earlier statement about ambition.

“I want a place that I can make friends and be judged based on what *I* do instead of what my parents did,” she argues back defensively. It doesn’t seem that difficult to understand to her, but it IS a hat so perhaps it doesn’t know as much as humans as it thinks it does.

“I know humans very well. I’ve sat upon the heads of thousands,” it grumps momentarily before a shout of “Hufflepuff!” rings through her head and the hat is picked up for her to go join the wildly cheering table with a yellow-and-black striped runner down the center of it. Across the aisle and on the far side of the room, there are some angry-sounding exclamations, and she looks over to find some people at the Gryffindor table glaring at her as though she had somehow betrayed them.

At other tables, there’s whispers and some pointing.

None of it is a total shock. The papers had been speculating about what house she would be in for months, and Gryffindor had seemed to be the popular choice for her, citing both her parents and her grandfather being in it. There had been few mentions of her grandmother being a Slytherin, and fewer still of the multitude of Potters previous that who had been in each house in approximately equal proportion for as long as there had been houses at Hogwarts.

As nearby people hurry to introduce themselves, she replies with only a smile before turning her attention firmly back to the kids that still need to be sorted. Hardly fair they don’t get as much attention just because of her.

The rest of the sorting goes quickly and Dumbledore stands to spout a bit of nonsense before the food appears.

Thankfully, she’s saved from the next onslaught of people vying for her attention by an older girl appearing. “Oi! Budge up!” she commands Justin Finch-Fletchly and Megan Jones, on the opposite side of the table and a bit over. Aurelia spots a shiny copper badge below the Hogwarts crest on her robe and knows the girl is a prefect.

Her classmates grumble, but comply, scooting up the bench to make room, and she plops herself down right in the middle of the group of first years. “Right then, I’m Tonks. Just Tonks. Don’t ask. I’m one of the 7th year prefects. Up to me to keep an eye on you lot.” With this declaration, she points at the empty plate to the side of Aurelia, Megan and Justin having taken theirs as they scootched. “Pass me that, would you?”

Silently, Aurelia sets the fork and knife next to the plate on top of it, then passes the lot across the table to her.

“So, who’s got questions?” Tonks asks as she takes the plate and removes the utensils before reaching for a nearby serving spoon sticking out from a bowl of mash.

Her classmates seem a bit stupefied by an older student abruptly appearing in the middle of them, nobody able to muster anything as they slowly go about moving food from platters to plates. Aurelia is the first to pull herself out of it - a little. “Who’s our Head of House?” She knows it’s a woman named Pomona Sprout, but obviously can’t identify her up at the staff table.

“Professor Sprout,” Tonks answers immediately, helpfully pointing at a general area of the staff table and clarifying, “In the dark purple robes, hair’s a bit messy.” Aurelia looks over and spots the witch she’s talking about immediately. “You’ll meet her in a bit. She does a welcome speech after the feast. Bloke next to ‘er, in the dark blue, that’s her teaching assistant, Rollins. He technically doesn’t have anything to do with house leadership, but he’s a ‘Puff too, graduated five years ago and he was a prefect, so you can go to him if you need something and can’t find Sprout or a current prefect. He doesn’t board on like all the Head Professors, but he just lives down in Hogsmeade so he’s one of the part-time staff that’s around a lot.”

“Do most of the staff live here?” Sally-Ann asks curiously.

“‘Bout half, I think,” Tonks replies before explaining. “All the House Heads, the Headmaster, and the Head matron all have to be here nearly ‘round the clock, of course. They’re responsible for our safety. Filch and Hagrid, the caretakers, and some of the support staff are on full-time as well, and most of the head teachers for each department. The rest commute in. Lunch and feasts are the only times they’re all really here for meals because they’ll arrive just in time for classes and want to be home for dinner most days.”

“Who are the other House Heads?” Justin asks, eyes moving around the staff table.

“McGonagall, of course, for Gryffindor, but you’ll know that. Her welcome speech before the Sorting never changes.” Tonks starts spouting off information. “Head of Ravenclaw is Professor Flitwick - he’s the particularly short bloke. Head of the Charms department, as well. Then, down the end is the Slytherin Head and lead potions master, Snape.” This makes Aurelia’s eyes widen and her head snaps towards the end of the staff table that’s almost behind her, immediately finding the adult version of the boy her mother had been best friends with for so long. There’d been a few photos here and there in the pages of her journals.

“I thought the Slytherin Head was Slughorn?” Aurelia questions, trying to sound casual about it. “That’s what my family’s self-updating copy of Hogwarts: A History said.”

“He retired three years back,” Tonks explains. “I don’t think Snape really wanted to take the headship; officially he’s been the “Interim” Head until this year, so that probably just got finalized late in the summer. We don’t have confirmation, but rumor around the older years is he kept trying to convince the other Slytherin staffers to come on to board to take it, but they wouldn’t. Dumbledore must’ve just made him finally accept that he’s really the only person qualified for it who’s even a tiny bit willing. He’s bitter over it as well; been even more of an arsehole in lessons since he started acting as House Head as well as professor.”

All of the first years look at her in slight shock. It’s Megan that voices what they’re all thinking. “Did.... did you just call a professor an arsehole?”

“Yeah, because he is. You’ll find out soon enough,” Tonks is still quite blasé as she answers between bites.

At this point, people begin asking Tonks more questions in earnest, and Aurelia just listens with half an ear and processes. She hadn’t been expecting to encounter her parents’ friends. Or enemies. Obviously a number of the teachers are the same and will have known them, but, as far as she knows, most of her parents’ friends had died in the war or were otherwise not still around the British wizarding society. Them working at Hogwarts now hadn’t been something she considered as a possibility.

Her mother had written frequently about Severus Snape, even after their falling-out. Particularly while she had been pregnant with Aurelia. Lily and James had, at one point, had a massive fight because she wanted to reconcile with her best friend and have him be her godfather, while James was adamant that Sirius be her godfather.

Obviously, James had won the argument because she couldn’t deny that Severus, even if he could get over her being James’s child, had too many close friends that were their enemies.

“Has your hair changed colour?” the question snaps Aurelia from her musings, looking down at her shoulder to see if her thoughts had had her subconsciously changed her hair, only to find it the exact same shade of deep red it had been since leaving Vernon’s car that morning.

Looking up to see who Hannah had been talking to if not her, she’s just in time to see Tonks grin and shift her hair from the bubble-gum pink it had been (Hannah was right - it had been a dark fuschia when she sat down) to electric blue. Wait. But. That means. “Are you Nymphadora?” Aurelia asks excitedly.

The hair on the other girl changes instantly again, to a right, angry red, and Tonks immediately snaps, “Don’t call me that!” making the first years recoil slightly at the outburst, though the older students nearby seem utterly unphased. It must not be unusual. Then, Tonks pauses and looks confused before asking, “Wait. How did you know that?”

Sheepish, having not intended to blurt that out, Aurelia tells her. “Grandmother Dorea was really happy about proper metamorphs cropping back up in the family. She wrote about you in her journal when word reached her.” She at least has the sense to not mention in front of everyone that Tonks’s mother, Andromeda, sent back all of Dorea’s letters unopened when she tried to reach out. She DOES, however, tug her magic to make her hair the same electric blue Tonks’s had been a moment before, making the older girl’s jaw drop open and eyes go wide. Some of the other first years’ do as well, most seemingly confused but enthralled with people changing their hair colour at a whim.

“Bloody hell,” Tonks finally chokes out, the odd silence being broken. “I had no idea that the Blacks married into the Potters.”

There’s a sudden, matching silence behind Aurelia at the Slytherin table, which she’s rather stumped over. Darting her eyes around, she tries to not draw any more attention as she says, “Perhaps that’s a conversation for somewhere else?” and makes her hair her preferred shade of red again.

“Right,” Tonks shakes herself out of it. “Right.”

They’re saved from trying to awkwardly restart the previous conversation by the puddings disappearing and Dumbledore standing to address them again.

Aurelia listens to his various announcements, curious about the off-limits corridor, and trying not to fall into her usual morass of uncertainty about Dumbledore. He was meant to be the executor of her parents’ wills in the event Sirius couldn’t, but, as far as she’s aware, he’d done nothing but place her with Vernon and Petunia without so much as a by-your-leave and ensure the stipend found its way to them. She has no idea if any of their other stipulations had been honoured or not, so they very well may have been, and it’s not like he’s done anything outright objectionable that she’s aware of, but, still, he had left her with PETUNIA. There was a list of nearly a dozen people ahead of Petunia on the potential guardians should both James and Lily die before her majority. Even Snape had been on there above Petunia, and that was after Lily had agreed that he wouldn’t necessarily be the safest option to care for her. While her childhood hadn’t been horrid, that was largely down to the Family elves, and it hadn’t exactly been great either. The whole situation has left her with mixed feelings about the man she can’t even remember meeting.

Bless her mother for being so thorough in her daily journal entries (and the elves for bringing her the journals as a way to get to know her mother). She gets the feeling Lily had been a bit overly compulsive about that, but it’s given Aurelia a lot of information she probably would have had no way of knowing otherwise. At least not until she was a fair bit older and had free access to all of the Family files.

After she cringes and refuses to participate in the cacophony of the school song, they’re sent away, the Hufflepuff first years waiting for most of the crowd to clear before following Tonks through the entrance hall to a side corridor that slopes down and to the right in a sweeping curve.

“Kitchens are through here,” Tonks tells them, pointing at a massive painting of fruit as they pass it, “Someone’ll show you how to get in at some point, but we escort you around a bit for the first week or so to make sure you at least have an idea where you’re going, so you shouldn’t be missing meals.” A few turns later, she stops the group in front of a pile of barrels. “Alright, pay attention, because this always takes awhile to learn. It’s a bit like the entrance to Diagon, yeah? Tap the barrels in a specific order to open it. But you have to get the rhythm right, too.”

She taps her finger on the flat, round tops 9 times that Aurelia sees, and she knows it WILL take her a bit to get that down. She’ll need to see it up close several more times.

“What happens if you do it wrong?” Justin inquires.

“The first few times, nothing,” Tonks says, ushering them through to a very crowded room. It’s spacious, but Aurelia doesn’t think it was meant to hold the entire house at one time on any sort of regular basis. “If you do it wrong too many times in a row, you’ll get soaked in lake water.”

“But the lake’s...” Megan starts and trails off confusedly.

“Magic,” Aurelia offers the other girl an explanation.

They’re ushered through the crowded common room to a clear spot on the floor near a wide fireplace, plush cushions awaiting for them to sit on. Most people are piled onto the various furniture, while others are on yet more cushions, and some stand reclining against the walls, all chatting lowly, catching up from summer still.

Tonks had disappeared somewhere in the crowd - a feat, considering her hair had been turned back to bright pink by the end of the feast - as soon as they were settled, and the first years all sit on their cushions looking around at their older housemates, not sure what they should be doing.

After a few minutes, a voice cuts over the din, making everyone stop talking immediately. “Sorry, everyone! I was held up chasing a few gnomes that found their way in back outside,” Professor Sprout comes into view weaving easily through the crowded room, coming to stand in front of the first years. She’s smiling widely and seems quite cheery. “Well!” she exclaims happily, eyes roving around the assembled student and clapping her hands, “Welcome or welcome back to Hogwarts, House Hufflepuff! In case anyone has forgotten or doesn’t know, I’m Professor Pomona Sprout, your Head of House and one of the herbology teachers. As usual, we’ll be quickly going through the House rules before I leave everyone to get settled and into bed - don’t stay up chatting too late, try to remember most of you have class first thing in the morning,” she chastises them teasingly, getting a response of scattered laughter.

“The first and most important rule of being a Huffplepuff is to be respectful. Of the school rules, to your teachers and the staff, of all property that does not belong solely to you. Be respectful to your dormmates, your classmates, and every other student. Also be respectful to yourself. Think through your actions and their consequences. If something is going to have a negative impact even just on yourself, rethink it. All of the other rules can be linked back to this somehow. Rule two, for example - if you are having trouble, be it with another person, an assignment, a whole class, or just with feelings, ask for help. Professor McGonagall says it to every incoming yeargroup - your House at Hogwarts is your family. We are here to support one another, but we can’t always just know when someone needs that support. And you need to respect yourself and your housemates enough to ask for it instead of struggling until somebody does notice. Our third and final rule is...” she trails off, looking at the older students expectantly.

“Work hard when you need to, have fun when you don’t,” the entire rest of the house choruses out.

Still smiling widely, Professor Sprout says, “Very good! First years and prefects, please stay behind for a moment. The rest of you know where your dorms are. Again, please get enough sleep tonight!” she has to raise her voice slightly as most of the students standing and moving creates a hum of noise.

After the rest have split into boys and girls and disappeared down halls on opposite sides of the room, there’s six left besides the first years, all with the shiny badges denoting their status as student leadership. “First years, these are your prefects. One of them will be showing you all around until you’re more or less comfortable getting from class to class; for the first few days, please wait outside a classroom after you are let out; the person assigned for each escort trip may be coming from a different class so it could take a few minutes for them to get to you. Since there are so few of you this year, most of you will be having a dorm all to themselves. I did have to pair two girls up; if you would like to swap around who’s sharing, feel free to work it out amongst yourselves.” This prompts a couple whining noises and one playful ‘not fair!’ from the prefects.

It makes Aurelia wonder how many people are usually in a class. There’d only been about 30 first years in her group.

The professor is chuckling at the reaction from the older students as she asks, “Are there any questions right off? You’re always free to ask me or the older students later as well,” when all of them glance at one another shaking heads, she concludes, “Right. Off you go, then. The prefects will show you to your rooms. If you aren’t out here ready to go to breakfast by 7:30, one of them will come fetch you from your dorm.”

They stand and split by gender to head opposite directions with the older students.

The girls’ corridor is to the left from the common room entrance, with a few water closets on either side in rows right near the entrance of the hall. “These are just toilets for when you’re in the common room and need it,” Tonks takes over explaining again. “There’s a bathroom shared between each set of two dorms. I’d give you the spiel about making sure to keep your things in your assigned cupboard in them, but with no more than three of you sharing one, I doubt that’ll be a problem. Some of us have seven others to share with.”

As they enter a spot where the corridor balloons out into a circle before narrowing again, the group halts. “Your rooms are there,” Tonks points to the left side, where there are four doors spaced along the curved wall, their names on them - it looks like Aurelia will be sharing with Sally-Ann. “Across the hall are us 7th years, knock on my door and ask for me if you need anything,” she pauses again, pointing at the middle-right door on the other side, which has her name third from the top on a nameplate. After they all nod, she shifts to point further down the hall. “Next section has the 2nd and 6th years, the one at the end is 3rd through 5th. If you need a prefect and I’m not around, try for these two.” with that, she nods at the heretofore silent other prefect girls.

They introduce themselves shortly with smiles. “Amy Jacobs, 5th year.” “Sara Henderson, 6th year.” After assuring there’s no questions a final time, the three girls disappear towards or into their own rooms, leaving the five first years.

Before they can do the same, Susan Bones speaks up, looking between Aurelia and Sally-Ann. “Do you two mind switching? Hannah and I have been looking forward to rooming together at school since we were little.” Aurelia and Sally-Ann trade a look and a shrug, before giving indications in the affirmative. It’s at that point they go into their rooms to retrieve and move their trunks.

Aurelia’s seems to be the smallest by a fair margin, so she’s in and out quickly, fiddling with the name plate on the door momentarily to find it slides out easily. In a couple minutes, it’s re-slotted-in on what had previously been Susan’s door and she’s taking in her new room.

It’s.... big.

Which makes sense, since it appears to be configured for four people, from the number of beds. The room is triangular or a five-sided diamond shape (she can’t quite tell), with the door on one side of the pointed bit and the door to the bathroom the other side and down a little. There’s four sets of furniture along the back wall, wood dividers between each set and a pole mounted to the open side with thick, yellowish-beige curtains bunched to either side of the openings. Even if she’d had three others in here with her, she’d still have a space to herself bigger than her bedroom back on Privet Drive. The only other thing of note is what appears to be some sort of radiator in the middle of the open space, presumably so it’s approximately equidistant to all the sub-divided spaces.

All of the furniture spaces are identical, so she picks the one on the far right for no particular reason and moves to set her trunk on the desk situated at the end of the bed, short bookshelf along one side of the desk. Between the bed and the stone wall is a side table with two deep drawers, matching one at the other side of the bed. Against the divider are a wardrobe and chest of drawers that comes up to Aurelia’s chest. Lamps are mounted over each side table and also the chest of drawers, with a table lamp sitting at one corner of the desk, to make up for the relatively dim light mounted at the ceiling in the open space, which really only illuminates enough to see to walk around.

Pulling her trunk open, the first thing to come out is her alarm clock, which she immediately sets for 6:30 to make sure she has time to bathe and get ready before meeting to go to breakfast at 7:30.

It’s nearly 11 already, so she only takes out a few couple of her uniforms to hang what needs to be hung and hopefully minimize the wrinkles from being packed into the drawers in her trunk, most for a month now. Then, her pajamas get set out on the bed, and she collects her two towels and all her toiletries, finally going to explore the bathroom. The door on the other side, leading to Sally-Ann’s room, is closed. On the wall between the doors are three sinks in a stone countertop, a long mirror mounted over it. The two bedroom-walls have cabinets, four apiece, and the back wall hold four stalls, wood doors not quite going all the way floor to ceiling, but will still cover everything that needs it; they’re all standing open, revealing two shower areas next to one another in the middle, and a toilet each end.

Taking the cabinet corresponding to her bed, she piles everything in there to sort out tomorrow and uses the facilities before heading back to her bedroom, closing the door and finding the lightswitch as she goes to turn off the main light. It’s only then that she realizes all the lights in all the spaces are on, so she quickly goes around and figures out the switches to turn the ones outside her area off as well.

Deciding she can just grab whatever else she needs tomorrow morning, Aurelia changes and starts turning out her own lights, setting in bed and hardly having time to realize how tired she is before she’s asleep.


End file.
